Journalism Bidding for Change
Discovering just some of the times journalism has fought for change and made our world a better place
I have always considered journalism to be a powerful weapon in fighting for societal change, actively working for society’s evolution towards a better future, short-term and long-term: whether that’s pressurising authorities to enforce the law on criminals, campaigning for tech giants to take more responsibility for user wellbeing or for higher standards of air quality.
In a speech given at the BBC College of Journalism in 2011, Helen Broaden explained one of the soul purposes of journalism is to hold power to account, adding that to do so “we have to tell the truth as we see it, to the people who need it, independent of government and commercial interests.”.
As reflected in the cases I outline in this blog, it is for this that we can thank journalism practices, for their depiction of events external from government agenda (well, in theory, my blog post discussing trust in journalism delves into analysing journalism motives in depth). But we can be grateful for the change they achieve for a better society in their efforts to adhere to Broaden’s ideal.
Amidst my research for this topic, I found myself feeling truly uplifted, but also thinking: why is all this not more widely known? I was finding sites like Journalism Matters (from which I discovered many of the cases visited in this blog) and realising just how much inspiring — and necessary! — change had been achieved for our society thanks to movements led by newspapers and journalists.
So, I thought I’d curate my findings and unveil just some of the societal evolution brought about by journalism: for analysis in the extent to which journalism matters in more ways than just keeping us informed of current affairs.
“Instagram helped to kill my daughter” — Ian Russell [to the BBC News]
Holding the Influential to Account: The Case of Molly Russell
Nowadays, social media’s darker undercurrents running toxic to users’ mental health, especially for children and young adults, is more widely understood. In many ways, I believe we have journalists to thank for this awareness as, without being exposed, why would these social media sites willingly volunteer all the ways they harness human behavioural psychology in order to induce addictive responses? (If this is an area that interests you — great minds think alike! And you can have a read of my blog post What I Did Not Know About Social Media)
Molly Russell was a 14-year-old girl who committed suicide in 2017, for which her father blamed Instagram for ‘helping to kill his daughter’. At first, both Apple and Instagram refused to allow Molly’s parents access to her iPhone and social media account — her search history and data — without a request from the coroner.
After this heartless lack of cooperation being reported on by newspapers such as The Times, the coroner did demand Molly’s account information from social media companies, writing to Instagram, Snapchat and Whatsapp. iNews highlighted this was thought to be the first time the coroner had made such a demand, and I am willing to believe the journalistic coverage and exposé fuelled the coroner’s incentive.
The Daily Telegraph then launched a Duty of Care campaign, calling for better online precautions for children from the potential harms these platforms cause: namely to ‘their mental wellbeing, relationships and their education’.
Over a subsequent 13 months, The Times uncovered reams of valuable research from charities, doctors and academics all drawing correlations between social media use and long-lasting damage to mental health in children, including increased rates of depression and anxiety. The research also unveiled the companies — as best-said by Journalism Matters’ report — ‘cynically target children by using addictive “hooks” from behavioural psychology to keep them online’.
The paper was also then granted exclusive access to challenge Instagram’s boss over the death of Molly Russel, being awarded for their efforts with increased agility through the deeper levels of the case.
Thanks to this coverage, since then the government have enforced a legally-binding Duty of Care from social media sites, facing consequences of ‘fines of up to ten per cent of turnover or the blocking of their sites and the government will reserve the power for senior managers to be held liable’ (gov.uk).
Evidently the UK are also ‘leading the way’ in the march to hold social media companies to account. Talk about faith in the flag: our nation’s journalists led to our country being one of the first in demanding and enforcing this necessary change!
The Times working to save some of 40,000 lives per year
In their Clean Air For All campaign, The Times called for the Government to pass a new Clean Air Act, to succeed its predecessor in 1956, which will set a legally binding deadline to “reduce plastics, restore biodiversity, improve the quality of our water and clean up our air” as outlined by PM Boris Johnson, who also spotlighted The Times’ efforts in saying the new bill was ‘inspired by the brilliant campaign of this newspaper’.
As the PM pointed out, the campaign led by The Times was inspired, brilliant, and demanding of a necessary change for the health of our national community. With the issue of toxic air cutting short an estimated 40,000 lives each year, this is a fantastic example of journalism using its influence to be heard by government and change our lifestyles for the better.
Daily Mail’s hunt for The Speedboat Killer
Jack Shephard, a.k.a. ‘The Speedboat Killer’ was found guilty of Manslaughter by Gross Negligence for the death of Charlotte Brown, after she was fatally thrown from his speedboat in the Thames in December 2015 and Shephard neglected to tell paramedics where she was after being saved himself.
The case caused outrage amidst the general public when he was awarded tax payers’ money to fund an appeal against his sentence, despite being on the run from imprisonment.
Enter: the Daily Mail! The paper launched a campaign to track down Shephard, offering a £25,000 reward if he was found. They also worked closely with Charlotte’s family, supplying exclusive interviews and new leads, pressurising the Government and Metropolitan police to take the necessary action to serve justice for Charlotte and her family.
This induced a national debate about legal aid being supplied to fugitives, which led to Theresa May, the P.M at the time, stepping in to personally plead to Shephard to hand himself in and face his sentence. The then Home Secretary also followed May’s lead, pledging to step up the search for Shepard.
Thanks to the Mail’s investment of resources and shining a spotlight on the circumstances to spread vast awareness and allow public debate to induce necessary pressures on authorities, The Speedboat Killer was finally found and sentenced to six months for absconding on top of a six year sentence for Gross Negligence Manslaughter.
The Daily Mirror Changing Law for Life
The Daily Mirror’s Changing Law for Life campaign can be credited for saving countless of future lives, and for the reason we are now all organ donors unless we opt out.
As you were likely aware, it was once — fairly recently — an opt-in system: we had to opt in to be an organ donor. But there is an undoubted issue in this, what if one person simply kept forgetting to opt in: and never got the chance to. How many lives were then lost as a result of not being able to get a transplant? Now imagine how many people likely forgot to opt in — how many lives could be lost then, when alternatively a transplant would have so easily saved them? Reflecting this, gov.uk found that while 80% of people said they would be happy to donate their organs, only 37% were registered as donors.
To demonstrate this, a case that contributed to our renewed law on organ donations was that of Kiera Ball, a young girl who unfortunately passed away after a traffic accident in 2017. After volunteering her for organ donation, Kiera save four people: her kidneys went to two adults, her liver went to a baby, and her heart saved nine-year-old boy Max Johnson.
After meeting Max, Kiera’s father Joe said, “Meeting Max and his family brought us some comfort and it was really helpful to see how powerful organ donation is. Keira lives on in Max and the other people she helped and we are super proud of her.”
The Daily Mirror’s three year campaign — alongside Max and his family — helped to shape the national debate around organ donation, with a fantastical 17,000 people taking part in a government consultation for a new opt-out system. Theresa May then announced the new law: that everyone is presumed to be an organ donor unless they opt out. She credited the newspaper as a key contributor to the bill being passed, saying: “The Mirror’s campaign is a big reason we are closer to passing Max’s Law, inspired by a very brave young man.”
The Sunday Mirror vs the Telford’s Child Sexual Exploitation Scandal
It’s thought that up to 1,000 children were victims of sexual abuse in Telford, after being roped into The Telford Child Grooming Ring: a network of perverts and paedophiles raping, abusing and drugging young girls, an underworld organisation thought to have begun in the 1980s.
While social workers claim to have known about some of the abuse in the 1990s, police authorities didn’t open an investigation for another decade. According to The Sun (not my favourite source for credibility usually, but they must print fact so let’s trust this report) files were believed to show “council staff regarded the children who were abused and trafficked as prostitutes rather than victims”, and detailers of abusers were neglected and omitted from Asian communities, for fear of being labelled racist.
Needless to say, reading about this case shocked me; realising how long it took for law-enforcing authorities to bring these abusers to justice and how many young lives were damaged, and even lost, in the meantime. One of the highest profile cases took place in 2000, when Lucy Lowe, aged just 16, had her house set on fire by abuser Azhar Ali Mehmood, 26, killing her, her mother and her sister. Mehood was jailed for the murders — so he was thankfully behind bars, at least — but never arrested or charged for the sex abuse.
Unfortunately, without any intrinsic evidence to link the gang to the victims, no investigation could be opened. So, failing this, our nation’s journalists got on the case and the Sunday Mirror fought hard to see the abusers face the convictions they deserved.
They supplied evidence which helped to convict four of the abusers, they exposed authorities for their lack in efforts to protect victims, and their coverage of the entire case helped bring it to public attention: meaning justice then had to be seen to be being done in order to uphold the public’s faith in their justice system.
In this case, the Sunday Mirror demonstrate my reason for believing in journalism as a powerful tool to pick up the slack when the justice system lets us down. Here, the Mirror ensured that no detail of the case implying deliberate omission of persecution surpassed the public’s knowledge, such as the Crime chief trying to halt Telford child sex abuse probe after publicly showing support. After his public pledge to “…support whatever scrutiny is appropriate and necessary” because it was ‘his role to represent communities, the Mirror exposed that he sent an email to the home office that same day, saying; “In 2016 I was co-signatory on a letter to the Home Secretary, stating that whilst I welcomed any constructive scrutiny, I did not believe an independent inquiry was necessary.”
The Mirror covered every new development in the case, including coverage headlined “Voice of The Sunday Mirror: Free These Poor Kids From Terror”, exposing social services chief is one of THREE councillors exposed as paedophiles, and asking ‘Why weren’t they saved?’ reporting on whistle-blowers who were silenced.
This could serve as a deterrent, indirectly communicating their invested interest in this case to the government and law-enforcing authorities and, most importantly, that any evidential neglect to hold the abusers accountable would be exposed: bringing it to the attention of the public to contribute to the debate of general interest.
If that last part as got your eyebrows skewed in confusion, the debate of general interest means, for the sake of public knowledge, journalists and publications can release potentially defaming information if it is deemed to be important for the public to know. In this instance, it undoubtedly was. And this is what the Sunday Mirror played a huge role in fighting for; actively demanding justice was met through exposé and deterring any neglect of justice.
The Sun Rallying an Army
The most recent example of publications using their power for good is the Sun and their Jabs Army: working to gather volunteers to help with the COVID-19 vaccine rollout.
They have been publicly thanked by the Prime Minister, the Health Secretary Matt Hancock and Kier Starmer for hitting their target of recruiting an amazing 50,000 volunteers. What a way to start the new year!
Matt Hancock recently expressed on a live press conference: “I want to thank each and every one of you and The Sun newspaper for leading this effort.”, while PM Boris Johnson extended great praise to the newspaper and its readers for contributing so significantly to this nation’s progression towards putting the virus in the past:
“Congratulations and wholehearted thanks to The Sun for smashing through your target and enrolling more than 50,000 people to join the Jabs Army.
“It’s a great credit to your readers. Vaccinating the country is a huge national effort but with your help we will get there.”